The mini ‘Beast from the East’ had meant that recycling collections across Devon have been suspended.

Collections have been cancelled in East Devon, Exeter, Mid Devon, Teignbridge, Torbay, and Torridge, while there are warning that there could be disruption in the South Hams, West Devon and North Devon.

The Council plan to catch up with today’s missed collections on Saturday 24 March.

If people’s bins, bags or boxes were due for collection today, they are advised to take them in and present them at the front boundary of their property by 6am on Saturday morning (but not before 6pm the evening before).

Because of the delay to collections the refuse teams will take up to three extra sacks of rubbish per household. There is no limit on extra recycling. People are asked to label the sacks with the word ‘Recycling’ and the first line of their address.

Answers to questions about the catch-up plan

Q: Why are we doing a catch-up collection this time, when we didn’t do it for residents who were affected two weeks ago?

A: Because of the Easter bank holiday, residents who were due a collection today would not get another one until Saturday 7th April, which is almost three weeks. That would mean storing and collecting nearly five weeks’ worth of waste, impacting on residents and our collection crews. Also, this time we have a high degree of confidence that conditions will improve by tomorrow so we will only miss one day’s work.

Q: The main roads are fine to drive on – why don’t you try and collect from those at least?

A: Pavements and side roads are slippery, which means a significant risk of injury to our workforce. Conditions will not improve significantly until much later in the day so we could only do a small fraction of our work scheduled today.

Q: Why not just move everybody’s collection back by one day this week?

A: That would mean the whole city having a change of day, causing more widespread confusion. It would also mean more streets with bins staying out of the pavement, which conflicts with our policy of keeping pavements clear of bins

MID DEVON

Waste & recycling collections have been suspended today due to unsafe conditions. Collections will resume when it is safe to do so. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Read More

Beast From The East 2 - Snow

For the health and safety of both residents and operatives our waste and recycling crews have been advised to stand down today (Monday 19 March 2018), due to the adverse weather conditions.

We hope to have our services back to normal as soon as possible.

SOUTH HAMS

Due to the severe weather there may be some disruption to our refuse and recycling collections today, we are asking residents to please leave your refuse or recycling out as usual and we will endevour to collect it if it safe to do so. If we are unable to collect your refuse or recycling today, we will do our best to collect it by the end of the week. If we do not manage this we will run an extra collection service on Saturday.

WEST DEVON

Due to the severe weather there may be some disruption to our refuse and recycling collections today. Please leave your refuse or recycling out as usual and we will continue to collect where it is safe to do so. Please leave your waste and recycling out until 7.00 pm. If we are unable to make your usual refuse or recycling collection today we will return on Saturday March 24th. We would be grateful if you could store any uncollected refuse and recycling until that date.

NORTH DEVON

Unfortunately, our collection vehicles have not been able to access a number of areas today due to the snow. As a result, the following areas will not receive a black bin collection today: